24. It is simply by his will (and without any external appliance), that this god Brahma stretched the network of the universe, as a spider weaves its web out of itself; it revolves like a disc or wheel in the air, and whirls like a whirlpool in the hollow depth of the intellect, appearing as it were a sensible sphere in the heavens.
25. These spheres present some bodies of great brightness, and others of a lesser light; which there are some scarcely visible to us, and all appearing as figures in a painting.
26. All created objects appear in this manner and those that are not created never appear to view; but they all appear as visions in a dream, to the sight of the learned.
27. The intellect is the selfsame soul, and the Lord of All, and the seeming visibles are all really invisible; they are all evanescent for their want of lasting bodies; and neither are they visible by themselves, nor are they ever perceptible to or seen by us.
28. The vacuous intellect, sees these as its dreams in the great vacuity of the intellect, and this world being no other than a phenomenon of the vacuous intellect, can have no other form than that of mere vacuum.
29. Whatever is manifested by the intellect in any manner, the same is called its form and body; and the countenance of that manifested form for a certain period, is termed its nature or destiny.
30. The first manifestation of the divine intellect, in the form of vacuum and as the vehicle of sound; became afterwards the source of the world, which sprouted forth like a seed, in the great granary of vacuity. (The conveying of sound and the containing of worlds are the nature of vacuum).
31. But the account given of the genesis of the world, and of the creation of things one after the other, are mere fabrication of sages for instruction of the ignorant, and has no basis on truth. (Because no reason can be assigned for the Lord’s production of the material world).
32. There is nothing that is ever produced of nothing, nor reduced to nothingness at any time; all this is as quiet and calm as the bosom of a rock, and ever as real as it is unreal. (The world is real in the ideal, but an utter unreality in its materiality).
33. As there existed no separate body before, so there can be no end of it also; all things exist as inseparable infinitesimal with the spirit of God, and can therefore neither rise nor set in it where they are always present.